Oral Answers to Questions

Eilidh Whiteford Excerpts

Monday 18th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Steve Webb]

My hon. Friend is quite right. At the moment, people have to go to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs for their tax credits, to the local authority for their housing benefit, and to the Department for Work and Pensions for their jobseeker’s allowance. Having all this in a single system will improve take-up, and that is one of the things that the Gingerbread report did not factor in.

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

The Gingerbread report does, though, warn that working single parents are likely to lose a higher proportion of their income than other household types. Why does the Minister think that the children of lone parents should lose out?

[Steve Webb]

As I say, the report makes some assumptions that it accepts are not true. One of its assumptions is that there is no impact on take-up; it assumes 100% take-up before and after. We know that that is not true—that take-up is partial—and rolling all three benefits into one will improve take-up for the benefit of the children of lone parents.